“Elfrida is awake now, deary,” came a voice from below. “If you think anyone with magic could sleep through this, you are very much mistaken.”

Now Elfrida came up the stairs, wrapped up in a woolen shawl even more voluminous than Rosa’s, hair entirely covered by a frilly nightcap of monumental proportions. “Move over and give me some bed room, girls, my old bones cannot take this cold.”

Giselle did more than that, she got up and stoked the stove, then came back to bed, glad that her bed was a very old one that could probably have held an entire family.

“We need to keep the others—the ones that are not the Indians, the Captain, or Herr Kellermann—from getting the notion that this is anything other than a normal storm for this part of the world, and panicking,” said Rosa, once Elfrida was under the eiderdown with both of them. The sylphs were paying very close attention to what the three of them were saying; glancing up from time to time, Giselle saw their eyes shining down solemnly in the light from the lamp.

“Bless you, that will be the matter of two spells at most,” the “kitchen-witch” said with conviction. “One on the oven, and the other on the salt. I’ll bless the salt to drive out evil influences, so even if the bastards out there manage to get something past our defenses, anything cooked with holy salt will keep a body safe, and the Good God knows you can’t bake bread without salt. And the other spell, the one I intend to put on the oven, will handle anything that’s baked in it; that’s all the bread, of course, and we all eat bread three times a day or more, plus all the sweets. Your friends do like their pies. I have never seen pies vanish so fast.”

“Yes, but what does this other spell do?” Rosa said, a little impatiently.

“Keep them . . . well . . . tranquil. It’ll make them a bit slow, and it isn’t something I’d set under any circumstances but this, but better that the chores be done slowly, and that they maybe fall asleep over them, than that they panic.” Elfrida nodded as Rosa’s eyes widened. “They won’t notice anything that they aren’t expecting to see, either. I use it when I need to do something, and I don’t want those who I am keeping house for to get a notion I’m unnatural.”

“That must be very handy,” Rosa said, envy in her voice.